En Fuego

a couple laying on the terrace's chairs smiling at each other

En Fuego

When I began my massage therapy private practice here in the Bay Area, two clients I met while working at the Claremont Spa encouraged me to go out on my own. I call them each Client Zero. One of them was connected to the Oakland Fire Dept. and within weeks, I was working with a team of 5 firefighters – all best of friends. Within the year, I was working with dozens of firefighters as well as their families and friends.

While I’ve ascertained I wouldn’t last five minutes in a firehouse atmosphere (paramilitary, locker room antics, etc.), I can say with absolute clarity firefighters are some of the most genuinely compassionate people I have ever met. When push comes to shove, they have your back and will risk their lives for you.

I mention this to introduce the latest chapter happening at this very moment here at Reverie Retreat. There’s a fire burning nearby and they’re calling it King Fire. With a name like King Fire, you’d have ears perking up merely out of curiosity. With a name like King Fire burning 18,000 acres 10-12 miles away from Reverie Retreat, and you most certainly have the attention of Tamara, Ramon, Liz, and Stan. Think of that as a swath of land the size of 562 Reverie Retreats… and growing.

 

As of this writing the King Fire, which is just north of Pollock Pines off Hwy 50, is expanding toward us during the night due to west and northwesterly winds down the American River canyon, and away from us during the day due to the winds shifting to the east and northeast. Thankfully, the affected area is not heavily populated, though the lack of roads also makes containment difficult. Regrettably, this king of fires might just cancel our sold out retreat this weekend.

Murphy’s Law comes to mind. For those of you not intimately familiar with this adage, it goes like this:

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Since Reverie’s inception, each one of us has had numerous opportunities to discover projects taking two, three, ten times longer than we’d planned. We now chalk that up to country living and the nature of building something new never having done it before. Even with this experience under our belts and despite our best efforts and planning, this one is out of our control. Plane tickets from Seattle, Costa Rica, and New York. Carpools from Reno and the Bay Area. Grocery shopping trips, supply runs, Facebook posts… our collective health comes first. Breathing in Mr. King Fire precludes that. And so we may have to pull the plug on the weekend we’ve been so excited about.

 

 

This experience offers us a glimpse of what surely will happen again and some practice staying nimble and flexible. As a business, it’s an opportunity to grow and make the best decisions we can despite personal disappointment. It’s an opportunity to be grateful for the important things in life and yet more practice with anything and everything going wrong. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to appreciate our firefighter friends we know and those we haven’t met yet.

Thanks for reading,

Stan

 

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